RT'ed by William Gibson on Twitter:
and it's so very on the nose of the issue:

@LillyHerself this genuinely makes sense, though. Cities where everyone is using the A/C experience a strain on the cities’ power grid, which in a worst-case scenario leads to rolling blackouts. AI datacenters (and their wasted efforts) are powered by different grids far from cities, sometimes in the middle of nowhere.

The damage to the global environment is the same, of course, but the local effects can be quite different.

@mighty_orbot @LillyHerself The tweet is funnier, but your take is sadly more accurate. Reigning in datacenter electrical consumption wouldn't solve overburdened power grids in urban centers.
@Longwing @mighty_orbot @LillyHerself the guest on a recent Volts podcast had this interesting stat that global energy consumption for AI currently sits at about 10% of the power consumption of American TVs.